Comments for Bill Ward's Brickpile

Comment on How best to share building instructions for my creations? by Shawn

Shawn — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:48:41 +0000

As far as cost, I would offer the LDraw and pdf files for free and work on monetizing the blog. The free content will attract traffic, and the traffic is where you’ll be able to make your money from your effort. Perhaps you could also offer printed instructions for a price, or even publish an entire book of instructions. But it’s the free content that will drive your site. Just my two cents

Comment on Track Layout Geometry by Bill

Bill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:14:06 +0000

Nope. I’ve seen plastic track made by some Chinese knockoff brand but not with the electric rails.

Comment on Track Layout Geometry by Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:18:01 +0000

Hi Bill,

Are you aware of any third-party producer of LEGO-compatible 9V track?

Comment on About Me by Bill

Bill — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:12:30 +0000

Thanks! That pretty well captures the issues… I think the problem is I’m too much of a perfectionist – if I do something I want to do it “right” the first time.

Comment on About Me by Rich Levier

Rich Levier — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:57:03 +0000

Dear Bill:

In selling Building instructions—the main problem is, Once you sell one copy–it’s out there–and the buyer can tweak it a little and then re-sell it. Or just re-sell it right away…

I’d recommend small simple sales for not a lot of money–to individuals. Sell a copy of “How to Build This Box Car”, for example.
Or a “How to Build Micro Tower of the Empire State Building.” Specialties like those would interest me as a buyer. And especially to me, as someone who doesn’t speak L-draw, or as someone who does NO designing on computer……

If these “sets” were put in a box with bricks, how much would they sell for? As Lego Sets, they’d have one price. As Lego Architecture sets—double it. As Custom Created-by-fans lego sets (Like that guy in the Northwest who created The Blacksmith’s shop) they’d have another price.

Why not put together some instructions for one of your more requested sets and try it out?

Good Luck

And add me to your list of Fans.

Rich Levier
Los Angeles

Comment on How best to share building instructions for my creations? by Iain

Iain — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:14:08 +0000

Bill, have you considered looking at what options the newest version of LDD (Lego Digital Designer) offers?

Comment on Buying Bulk LEGO by Joel Dino

Joel Dino — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:28:43 +0000

Bill,

My next computer build will include Lego bricks for housing the motherboard, cpu, power supply and hard drive. Do you know anyone in BayLug who has done this before?

See you this Saturday at the meeting.

Joel

Comment on Buying Bulk LEGO by Nick

Nick — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:12:38 +0000

I found a great site that organizes a bunch of links for bulk lego purchases: http://www.snazzindustries.com/bulk-bricks.html
It has the same old regular blah about bricklink but actually has some interesting links I had never seen before. Like some lego education stuff where you actually can get a bunch of nxt bricks for much cheaper than normal.

Comment on How best to share building instructions for my creations? by Jim

Jim — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:49:02 +0000

Hi, Bill. This is an interesting question to me, too.

In the past, I’ve posted quite a few instructions on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/anoved/tags/lpub/) as images saved from LPub PDF pages. The current version of LPub can save directly to images. As an experiment, I have also had an LPub instruction PDF printed with Lulu (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/anoved/sets/72157615162512108/ and http://lulu.com/).

I think the market for finished instructions is much bigger than for raw LDraw files. If I were selling instruction files or booklets, I might provide the LDraw files as a freebies. I’ve posted quite a few on Brickshelf, too, although I have used Brickshelf in a while.

I’ll be curious to see what you decide!
Jim

Comment on About Me by Bill

Bill — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:59:06 +0000

See my latest post, http://www.brickpile.com/2010/02/12/how-best-to-share-building-instructions-for-my-creations/ about sharing my creation designs.

Comment on Emerald Night is Here! by Nigel Stephens

Nigel Stephens — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:21:30 +0000

Thanks Bill. I previously tried substituting the rear bogey section on the locomotive with 12v motor; involved drilling a hole in the baseplate. Although the train would move along a straight, it came to grief on bends, as the “replacement” powered bogey had a fixed rather than a floating point as in the original.

I’ll try the tender, although I am attempting to retain as much of the original look as possible; I would hate to lose the suspension mouldings as a for instance.

Thanks again.

Comment on Emerald Night is Here! by Bill

Bill — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:09:57 +0000

I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. Here in the US the old 12v system is pretty rare, since it was never sold here. But someone in my club has made a version that runs on 9v tracks. The easiest way would be to put the motor in the tender and have the locomotive just be unpowered.

Comment on Emerald Night is Here! by Nigel Stephens

Nigel Stephens — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:09:55 +0000

Do you know if anyone has converted The Emerald Night to the old 12v system. The train is wonderful, but I have a vast amount of the 12v system, all in good working order, the gauge is the same, so it would be a shame if I couldn’t get it run with all the other loco’s. I had one brief go at it, but it was not successful.

Comment on About Me by Bill

Bill — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:53:15 +0000

I don’t think I have that one, sorry….

Comment on About Me by Jimmy

Jimmy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:34:24 +0000

Would it be possible to email me the Transamerica Pyramid LDraw?

Comment on About Me by Bill

Bill — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:42:16 +0000

Thanks! I do have LDraw files for many of my creations, but I haven’t figured out the best way to make them available…

Comment on About Me by Jimmy

Jimmy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:10:32 +0000

Hello Bill,

I’ve been browsing around and love your awesome Lego pictures and creations. I was wondering do you have blue prints of some of your builds that I can have. I am starting to get back into Legos and wanted to imitate some creations that have been made by others first. I totally understand if you don’t want to release the build prints. Thanks for keeping me entertain with the pictures.

Sincerely,
Jimmy

Comment on Buying Bulk LEGO by Bill

Bill — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:48:50 +0000

LEGO doesn’t make those.

Comment on Buying Bulk LEGO by Hussein

Hussein — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:05:54 +0000

Thanks , but i was actually thinking along the lines of lunablocks dimensions if you know what i mean…. BIG!

Comment on Buying Bulk LEGO by Bill

Bill — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:34:43 +0000

Not sure what you mean by “BIG GIANT LEGO” but if you mean Duplo, the bricks that are 2x in each dimension compared to regular LEGO bricks, you should be able to find them at all the same places listed in the article.